


the great disappointment

by thisisthefamilybusiness



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Asphyxiation, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Choking, Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches, Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall, Gen, Gore, Graphic Violence and Injury, Heavy Angst, High Chaos (Dishonored), High Chaos Corvo Attano, Past Corvo Attano/Jessamine Kaldwin, Threats of Violence, Whump, Whump Daud, do we still use the term whump or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 08:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12767109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisthefamilybusiness/pseuds/thisisthefamilybusiness
Summary: Corvo should kill him. What did honor matter to a man who’d killed a completely defenseless woman in front of her child?Daud would never expect it. Make it a clean death, quick and simple.No, he deserved to suffer. Better to slide Daud’s own blade right under his ribs, right where he’d gutted Jessamine, and watch him retch his last few breaths on the rotting floor.Just like her.





	the great disappointment

He killed Jessamine.

Drove a cold metal blade right under her ribs, and tore her stomach open, tossed her corpse to the cold stone ground like it was nothing. Left her to choke on her own blood in her last moments, like it was nothing.

Corvo tightens his grip around Daud’s throat, watching the skin go bloodless-pale under his fingers.

He killed Jessamine.

Daud makes an ugly gurgling noise, spit pooling in his mouth, but his hands remain by his sides. He doesn’t even try to fight back.

The fucking bastard.

Corvo should gut him like he’d gutted Jessamine. Toss him to the rotting wooden floor and let the rats eat his corpse. Should make Daud look at the bodies of his Whalers that Corvo had killed his way through, like Corvo had had to see Jessamine’s.

Daud’s face has gone bluish now, instead of just red. Corvo’s been careful to keep the pressure away from Daud’s windpipe, so he didn’t inadvertently crush it and kill Daud too quickly.

Corvo had killed them all.

Slaughtered his way through the Overseers and the Abbey, through the City Watch and the guards, through the aristocracy and the nobility, through the street gangs and the criminal underbelly of Dunwall.

Hundreds of corpses, in alleys and streets and apartments and offices. The rats would feast for weeks.

 _How many did you kill?_ Emily’s little face set into a grim expression. She’d smiled when he told her the number. She’d seen so much death in her short life. Her innocence was forever lost because of Daud.

He should shoot Daud in the head, leave his brains spattered across the decaying walls of the Flooded District. He should drive a bolt right between his eyes.

Corvo clenches his hand that much harder, and Daud’s eyes bulge a little, vacant and unseeing. There’s spittle dribbling onto the back of Corvo’s hand.

He hadn’t even fought back, really. The son of a witch from legendary Pandyssia, one of the Outsider’s few other Marked, and Daud had put up a fight weaker than a mostly-drunk City Watch officer.

Even in his last moments, Daud would find a way to keep ruining Corvo.

He lets go.

Daud falls forward, catching himself with one hand, coughing and gagging. “Didn’t take you for the merciful kind,” Daud chokes out, voice even rougher than usual. He massages at his throat to ease the pain as he sits back on his heels.

“I’m not.” Corvo could slit his throat right now, while Daud wasn’t anticipating it.

“Did you kill all of them?” Daud gestures vaguely toward the balcony, where a Whaler’s hand is just barely poking through the doorframe.

“All of them in this district.”

Daud almost looks sorrowful, like the Whalers had meant something to him. “There were some good ones there.”

“Not good enough.”

“Maybe the Abbey was right about you,” Daud says. His gloved fingers brush over the deep red marks left on his neck.

Corvo swings his sword into the folded position and slides it into its scabbard at his side as he pulls himself up to a higher perch in Daud’s office. “About what?”

“You’ve talked to the Outsider, sure. But there’s something wrong with you, beyond that. I’ve seen what the Outsider can do and you… You’re not it.” Daud works his jaw open and closed a few times. There will be an ugly ring of bruises there in a few hours’ time, blossoming deep blue and purple. “They’re telling stories about you, in that mask. A monster from the Void. Something inhuman, making Dunwall pay for its crimes.”

Corvo should kill him. What did honor matter to a man who’d killed a completely defenseless woman in front of her child?

Daud would never expect it. Make it a clean death, quick and simple.

No, he deserved to suffer. Better to slide Daud’s own blade right under his ribs, right where he’d gutted Jessamine, and watch him retch his last few breaths on the rotting floor.

Just like her.

One of the Whalers was only unconscious—one of Daud’s favorites, if their coat colors really meant anything. She’d fought hard, more powerful than the rest. Maybe he’d shake her awake and make her watch.

There’s a portrait of Jessamine—stolen from some building somewhere else in the district, no doubt—in the middle of the room, face crossed over with red ink. Rage curls in Corvo’s gut.

Daud didn’t deserve to look at her.

The assassin is still monologuing—about leviathans and men, the Outsider and cruelty, as though philosophy mattered to Corvo. “—But we’re not monsters, are we, Corvo?” Daud drones on. “We made choices. And we chose to be this way.”

Corvo leaps, landing behind Daud agilely, blade drawn again, the flat pressed right against the worst of the bruises around his neck.

Daud laughs again. “Change your mind after all?” He doesn’t try to break free, just lets the cold metal of the blade dig into his skin.

“One of them is still alive,” Corvo mutters. “Your little Whalers. Do you want her to see your last breaths?”

“Do you want me to tell you that I helped raise them? They were all street rats, once, nowhere else to go.” The edge of the blade leaves thin red lines where it cuts into his bobbing throat as he speaks. “Would that make you feel like you were avenging Emily? Making her watch me die, like your daughter watched Jessamine die?”

Corvo holds the sword a little tighter, digging it in a little more, feeling the soft edges of Daud’s skin yield beneath the metal. “You don’t deserve to say her name.”

“That bothers you, does it?” Daud reclines his head against Corvo’s shoulder, scar over his right eye twisting his smile into a smirk. “Bothers you that I have guilt, too, doesn’t it?”

“You don’t get to feel sorry,” Corvo growls, and his blade finally actually breaks skin. A slow trickle of blood oozes from Daud’s abused throat, smearing dark against the blossoming bruises.

Jessamine, lying broken and cold on the stone. Her last seconds in the world, spent watching her daughter be stolen away in a panic.

“Do you think death will make the world any lighter, Attano? Do you really think that after you’ve slaughtered your way through this city, things will just go back to being what they were? Or that your mercy will matter?”

Corvo kicks Daud’s knees out with a sickening crack of cartilage, withdrawing his blade from the assassin’s throat. Daud makes a choking noise of pain as he falls, weak and human.

The legendary Knife of Dunwall.

A disappointment to the very end.

**Author's Note:**

> part of my 500 word/day challenge! the prompt was less... a literal prompt and more about how TOTALLY COOL it would be to see Corvo's righteous anger. 
> 
> talk to me on [on tumblr](http://officialclaricestarling.tumblr.com) | [buy me a coffee](https://ko-fi.com/clstarling/) & i'll write you a ficlet!


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